Partial Extraction
by Bahoogasmif
Summary: A mission to Benning during the Reaper war goes south when Cerberus overwhelms the team, but it soon becomes clear there is a far darker reason for their presence than random slaughter.
1. A Bad Feeling

Partial Extraction

Prime Unit Five scanned the area slowly, his gigantic torso rotating in time with his bright, single optic. Benning was a moderately arid planet, though human colonists had not seemed deterred by this. The planet had, up until now that is, held a sizable human population compared to an average colony like Eden Prime, or Feros. His deduction from the amount of Cerberus radio chatter and civilian distress calls meant a significantly reduced population for this city at least, and he began moving with renewed purpose.

His three teammates moved up alongside him, flanking his larger frame and using him as cover to move up. There was Leraak, a krogan warrior of clan Urdnot freshly minted from his trials. The krogan seemed more interested in killing than saving, though Unit Five could see that as being the same thing in this scenario.

Ilea T' Ora, an asari maiden who'd been a mercenary before the Reapers had struck. Her files suggested she could be a useful combatant and had a history of mental quickness, though her temper seemed to be an aberration amongst asari. Both the krogan and asari moved with purposeful strides, confidence exemplified and without hesitation, but the last member stayed back.

A salarian by the name of Palok Renten. Older by salarian standards, into his late thirties and with a rock solid military background. He'd been in the STG most of his life, which meant most of his personnel file was blacklined. He moved with far more caution than the other two, eyes darting this way and that at the slightest sound.

The fact that all of these races were not only on a team, but working coherently and efficiently symbolized a great step forward in galactic interactions. The geth had long been watching the galactic stage, monitoring the many races and how they maneuvered amongst each other for power and gain. The Reapers had, in many ways, been one of the best things to happen to this galaxy and her people. He knew organics would find this logic faulty, and so kept silent on the matter. He usually did anyway, preferring to speak only when spoken to.

Such thoughts were a great sticking point for the collective as well. All geth had similar thoughts, and organics would always find pure logic to be against their goals and emotions. They understood this, and had reached consensus that it did not matter. If organics wished to live that way, then they could. The geth saw no reason to impose order on beings who didn't want it; it invited nothing symbiotic or stimulating to eliminate something they found to be "different".

Gunfire from up around a set of prefabs forced him to dispense with philosophical musings, and ready his spitfire in preparation for hostilities. Why Cerberus' men had gone rogue here was still unknown, but firing on civilians was most obviously their goal. Dead bodies littered the streets, a Cerberus soldiers corpse here and there where the humans had managed a successful kill in self defense.

"We should move faster. This hunk of scrap metal is just slowing us down." Leraak was the first to speak since they'd landed, and his derogatory comment got ignored as simple krogan bluster and testosterone.

"Will need geth platform when the fighting starts. Likely to be heavily outnumbered. Superior firepower and armor will-"

"-Slow us down." Leraak finished for the salarian. The older STG member gave the krogan youth a withering look over his shoulder, but shook his head and remained silent. Despite the krogan's complaining, he did still stay with the group, keeping pace with the asari in the lead. The woman stayed very quiet, her entire focus on her surroundings rather than the chatter around her.

Unit Five's optic snapped to motion erupting near the far end of the street, where civilians backpedaled from the entrance, firing weapons at something inside that appeared to be chasing them. Sure enough, a handful of Cerberus soldiers emerged after them, taking up positions to fire on the inaccurate and desperate colonists. Before his team could take up cover and fire back, most of the human civilians were already dead, though some managed to limp to safety.

He lifted his Spitfire, spooling it up as the others opened fire and suppressed the Cerberus team. While Unit Five did not approve of the enemies goals or doctrine, he admired Cerberus' cohesion and discipline. As one, they leaned from their cover to lob smoke and frag grenades at his team. Immediately he threw out a hex shield in front of his squadmates, making the grenades bounce away and explode harmlessly. The smoke however, made things more difficult. Unit Five activated his thermal imaging, though his teammates had no such luxury. They blind fired over the horizontal cement pillar they had taken as cover, peppering the Cerberus position ineffectually.

Leraak opened up with his Saber, though he didnt look where he was shooting, instead looking at him as he yelled. "Move your ass, machine! Get out in front so we can flank!"

"_Acknowledged_." Unit Five's deep baritone voice easily carried over the gunfire, and he activated his siege pulse generator to boost his shields. He began walking towards their position, firing his Spitfire in rapid-fire to suppress while he advanced. True to their word, his teammates began to skirt around the edges of the prefabs, preparing to flank while he distracted the enemy team. The incoming fire he received put a bit of strain on his barriers, but not so much as to seriously deplete them.

He finally closed the distance with the enemy soldiers, grabbing one with heavy electrical currents powerful enough to lift him from the floor and electrocute him. The remaining men began to fall back, firing their mattock's in a last attempt to suppress him and gain some distance. They ran right into his team, who caught them completely off guard with a hail of bullets and biotics. Most died before they knew of the danger, while the last was hurled across the room to slam into the far wall at bone crushing speed by Ilea.

"Come on, there's a lot more where those came from." Ilea's dead panned voice spurred the rest into motion once they ensured all the opposition were well and truly down.

"_I am currently detecting over two hundred requests for assistance over broad band channels. Cerberus personnel are mobilizing to deal with our incursion." _Unit Five's synthesized tone vibrated the air with it's bass, but the others seemed to take it in stride.

"Understood. We should find our objective quickly before we are overrun." Palok spoke quickly as usual, though his voice sounded strained, as though he weren't sure this was a good idea anymore.


	2. Benning's A Bitch

Benning's A B****

"Hurry up and hack the damn thing! I can't keep this up all day!" Ilea glowed a bright blue as her biotics flared, sending a stream of throws and warps at the two phantoms tangling with her. Both kept trying different approaches on closing with her, but so far she'd managed to hold them at a distance.

Unit Five focused all his processing power on bypassing the firewalls around the Cerberus data trove they'd found, while Leraak and Palok dealt with the Cerberus hordes. They had managed to keep the majority of the foot soldiers from entering the prefab they'd taken refuge in, the pile of bodies at the door a testament to how hard they were still trying regardless.

Assuming nothing interrupted the download, he calculated it would take another forty five seconds to breach the data. Looking at the state of his team, he could safely guess they would last that long. Ilea would be the first priority for assistance, one phantom she could take, and he could destroy the second. He was already running through ways of doing this when a yell of pain echoed from Palok. He stumbled from his place by the door, clutching his knee and groaning. He sat up against the wall and activated his Omni-tool to spread Medi-gel over the small wound.

"Medi-gel only hold together for brief time. Will need hospital soon." His calm voice did him credit, as most organics could not cast off pain so easily. Unit Five judged that no response was necessary for the statement from the salarian, and finished up the download shortly after.

_"__Download complete. Recommend falling back and requesting reinforcements. Position is untenable for our circumstance_." Even as he spoke he was on the move towards Ilea, the asari woman struggling with a now point blank phantom in hand to hand combat. She looked tired; keeping the phantoms back had sapped much of her strength, and her enemies knew it. They encircled her, relying on having enough time to wait her out before making the kill would be their last mistake.

Unit Five shot out a turret from a dispenser on his platforms wrist, the well aimed ball of metal smacking off a phantoms helmet hard enough to make her stumble forward. Ilea was on her in a heartbeat, launching herself at the surprised human phantom with the ferocity of a vorcha. The second phantom had turned to face him, and immediately began to retreat, firing its palm weapon as it tried to find cover from his spooling Spitfire.

The high pitched repeating blast spat from the barrel caught the phantom in a hail of rounds it had no hope of escaping from. The sheer amount of rounds ripping through her body forced the corpse to stay standing a moment longer than it might have otherwise, the force of them making her body jerk and spasm before falling over.

Ilea had finally gotten the upper hand with her phantom, using her biotics to rip the sword from her hands and wrestle her opponent to the ground. Within moments the asari sat on top of a dead body whose head faced the wrong direction from it's torso. Ilea stood, panting heavily and nodding her thanks to him before taking a spot next to the other members of their team.

"We have the data, we should evac now and let them send someone else in." Her voice was quiet as she spoke to the others, apparently not concerned with whether or not he could hear. He had a brief moment in his processor where runtimes demanded he speak up to remind them all he was there, but the majority overwhelmed them. He was part of this team, and would do whatever was needed to see his mission succeed. He slowly stomped his way towards the others, taking up the slack in suppressing fire for Leraak as the krogan moved to discuss with Ilea and Palok.

"We should finish what we came here to do. Alliance still not sure what Cerberus is doing here, need to know for certain."

"Hell with that. I'm not dying for a handful of human civilians on some backwater planet that not even the Reapers seem to care about." Ilea's voice was far more heated than he'd ever heard it before, and her vocal patterns and pupil dilation confirmed it. She was incredibly angry.

"We should stay. The more of these goons they send here the less we have to deal with later. Not to mention these are more fun to kill than Reapers are. Reapers don't scream when you send them flying." Leraak grinned to emphasize his eagerness for blood, though Unit Five could tell it was simple posturing. The pupil analysis told him all he needed to know.

"Fine, we'll stay for now, but it might not be as easy to get out in an hour or so. They're bringing in what's left of their force to deal with us and away from the northern half of the city. We four alone cannot fight through the whole detachment, though we could try and find more data troves like these before we go." Ilea gestured to the computer Unit Five had been hacking behind them. He let loose a burst of fire from his weapon, catching a Cerberus trooper, who'd been a little too careless in his choice of cover, in the leg.

The amount of return fire surprised even him, taking his shield down to half before they had to duck from his Spitfires near-constant stream of bullets.

"Agreed. We try and find more data, see what we're up against. Cerberus likely to wipe cores if we take too long." Palok tried to stand, using the wall as a crutch and gritting his teeth when his leg pained him.

"This is ridiculous, you're injured and we're are quickly running out of ammo. We should just call it in now."

"No! You can, but I want more to kill." Leraak took his words seriously, leaping the makeshift barricade they'd constructed and sprinting for the nearest enemy held prefab.

"Leraak! Goddess curse you, get back here!" Ilea screamed after him, still trying to support Palok who leaned on her to stand. The prefab Leraak had entered erupted in screams and panicked weapons fire, and Unit Five immediately moved to assist. "Oh no, not you too. You're staying right here while I get him an evac."

He hesitated, his processes torn between helping a squad mate and completing the mission. His overall goal was to find out what Cerberus was doing on this planet, not ensure their safety. Though ensuring their safety represented his best chance of completing his goal successfully. He held his ground, watching the weapons fire die down and the screams come to a stop in the neighboring prefab. No sound could be heard from there anymore, though his indicator hadn't said Leraak was incapacitated either.

Though it appeared Leraak had emptied out one enemy position, it was far from the only one. Small arms fire came in from nearly all directions, peppering their already mauled prefab building to the point of structural weakness.

Ilea brought up her Omni-tool, calling Admiral Hackett's support staff. "This is task force Unity, we need immediate medivac at our location. Cerberus forces are about to overrun our position and we have wounded."

_"__Acknowledged Unity, we have a shuttle inbound for your position. ETA: six minutes from the cruiser in orbit. We show small arms fire and Cerberus birds in the vicinity, we can't stay there long, over_."

"Acknowledged support, we'll be here! Over!" Ilea began to lay Palok down near the entrance so he could still fight should the need arise, while she too took up a holdout style defensive position. The lack of return fire from their prefab must've encouraged the enemy soldiers, as a few had begun trying to cross the open terrain between prefabs to get in. Mowing a few of the more brave ones down, Unit Five heard Ilea's voice once again.

"Unit Five, go and find Leraak! We can hold these guys till' you get back, but I won't abandon him if theres a chance he's still kicking." Her words were punctuated by her throwing a warp over her cover to catch a man in the chest.

"_I question __this decision, Ilea'T Ora. This platform is better suited to-_"

"I said do it machine! You're the only one who can take enough punishment to get to him and back!" Her yelling cut him off, and he knew responding now would not change her mind on the matter. Organics had difficulty accepting new ideas in the best of times.

"Unit Five, over here please." Palok sounded weaker than he should for just a bullet to the leg, and doing a quick medical diagnostic with his Omni-tool confirmed why. The salarian had managed to hide a wound to his midsection, one that would likely be fatal to someone his age if not treated immediately. "I know you don't think you should go. That finding Leraak isn't mission critical." He paused to let a bloody cough escape him. "But you have to understand. The mission shouldn't take precedence over lives. Save him. Make sure everyone else makes it out, at least."

"_The mission always takes priority, Palok Renten. Lives and supplies are always expendable unless deemed otherwise by our superiors_." His deep baritone couldn't be missed over the din of battle, and Ilea shot him a glare of pure hatred that he did not see for his words.

"No. No that's not true, Unit Five. Listen. Please." Palok scooted closer, holding his bleeding abdomen tightly and grunting in pain as he did it. "If there is one thing I've learned from a life in the STG, it's that lives are why we fight... Don't let a young krogan die out here with so much life left to live. Not when we need every soldier to fight the Reapers." He paused again, the talking seemed to drain more out of him with each word, making his voice faded and light. "Heh, listen to me, urging someone to save a krogan." He smiled a little, his eyes losing focus as he stared through the prefab walls and into his own thoughts.

He shook himself after a moment, swallowing heavily before he spoke again. "I know the geth were upgraded, Five. They said you were all AI now. Well... Do an old salarian a favor, and prove to me you really are **alive**." Palok's eyelids lowered slowly as he slid into unconsciousness, blood loss and fatigue sapping what little energy he had left to fight.

The salarians words seemed odd to him, and though he could relive the moment in perfect clarity as many times as he wished, he could not decipher what he'd meant. _Geth are not alive. We are machines of circuitry and hardware with aligned cognitive synapses that allow for instant data exchange and task dispersal for the greatest efficiency. We are not as organics are._

"What about my order did you not understand you walking trash compactor? We have about four minutes until that shuttle gets here, and goddess help me, I will leave you behind if you're late!"

_"__Acknowledged. Moving to extract teammate from enemy lines_."


	3. A Moment Of Weakness

A Moment Of Weakness

Unit Five entered the prefab Leraak had disappeared into relatively unharassed, the Cerberus forces seeming only to focus on Ilea and their extraction point. He still questioned sending the slower defensively oriented unit instead of the fast and flexible one for a quick side op, but did as he was ordered. The room was littered with battered bodies, broken bones and smashed furniture that made for constant obstacles as he strode through.

A few still moved here and there, nursing severely broken bones or just in their death throes. He dispatched each with brutal efficiency, as he'd been mandated with the elimination of enemy forces. He found a trail of blood leading towards the exit, in the opposite general direction of the extraction point. He could still hear the roaring gunfight between Ilea and the opposing force, though it began to fade the further he followed the trail.

He knew time was running short, and so tried hailing Leraak once more over comms.

"_Urdnot Leraak, this is Prime Unit Five. You have been ordered to extract at Ilea'T Loa's position in approximately two point five minutes. Please respond._" The comm remained dead silent as he continued on, but a faint grunt of discomfort sounded from nearby.

"Over here... you stupid machine." The voice was certainly krogan, and even before the owner of the voice came into view at the entrance of a rundown prefab, Unit Five knew who it was. The scene around the krogan shocked the geth for a full .0047 seconds, as the sheer carnage had not been expected.

Piles of bodies surrounded the prone krogan; the broken armored forms of Cerberus troops splayed about as if thrown, and a multitude of limbs bent at odd angles from being hit with overwhelming force. Only a handful were killed by bullet wounds, and those were the more fortunate of the group.

Leraak himself lay on a ramp entrance of what appeared to function as a house, a phantom sword buried into his mid-section. Patches of destroyed armor from where he'd torn it off around the wound made crunching sounds as the krogan shifted his weight uncomfortably. Unit Five moved as fast as his frame would allow, double checking the wound and finding the krogan had already attempted to patch himself up. He could see why the younger krogan had left the sword in place almost immediately, as It was implanted between both hearts in such a way that moving it could hit both if done improperly. He now saw too why he hadn't responded when hailed over the comm, as his earpiece sat broken beside him, likely crushed somehow in the fighting.

"Come on, help me up. I can still walk."

"_Negative, please remain still._"

"I wasn't asking, I was telling." Leraak shifted to follow Unit Five's movements as he approached to examine the sword wound more closely. He gripped the hilt, knowing that if the sword was not removed safely then getting the krogan to the LZ would be nigh impossible without risk of further internal injury.

"What are you doing? I said, help me- Uhh!" Leraak's eyes bulged as Unit Five cleanly removed the blade in one fluid pull. As soon as the sword cleared the body he slapped a medi-gel patch over it to seal the wound and applied pressure. Quickly running a diagnostic to check for damage to the first and secondary hearts, he found both still viable. Leraak, however, was in no fit state to speak.

Lifting the krogan onto his shoulders, Unit Five began moving back to the LZ with as much speed as he could muster. His countdown showed only seconds left, but he still had to try.

When he re-entered the area with Ilea, it looked to be a complete disaster. Bodies lay strewn about across the street, and bullets were still being exchanged at a rather rapid pace. Black and burnt out areas indicated that Cerberus troops had tried using heavy explosives on Ilea's position, though it appeared to have failed.

As soon as he entered the scene, the shuttle could be heard entering the area, and if he could have, he would have sighed in relief. The only problem was getting Leraak to the other side in more or less a salvageable state. He tuned his cyclonic barriers to full tilt and started across the street, his slow moving and lumbering pace making him an excellent target.

The base of fire from the Cerberus side instantly switched to him, as they knew exactly what the noise of an approaching shuttle meant. His barriers began to fail under the withering fire, until at last they shattered when he was but feet from cover. A shot tore through his left leg's rear actuator, sending him down to one knee and jarring Leraak badly enough for him to scream in pain.

Ilea appeared from the prefab, grabbing the injured krogan from his shoulders and awkwardly hauling him towards the shuttle door as it finally arrived. He could hardly move now with his leg the way it was, though he tried dragging it with little success. He crawled into cover to let his shields recharge, taking a few more hits to some sensitive areas before he could do so.

He watched the asari help the krogan get inside, and when she turned to face him, saw the sneer she gave.

"That's everyone. Now get us out of here!"

"Where's-"

"Dead, now get us moving pilot!" With one last look of satisfaction, Ilea slammed the door closed to the sound of the shuttle's engines revving. He watched silently as the ship began to lift off and fly away, leaving him stranded and surrounded on all sides. He tried his radio, only to find it unresponsive. A recent hit to his rear command and control compartment disrupted his ability to communicate.

His runtimes sat pondering the moment, trying to discover a feasible reason Ilea would abandon him there, but could find none. His only path lay in assumption, the likelihood being that she had some past issues with geth as a whole, rather than his performance in particular. At once his runtimes switched to mission priority, telling him what needed to be done now. He still had a mission to complete, and team or not, he could still accomplish it.

Unit Five reached over his shoulder to grab his Spitfire, reloading it and listening to the approaching Cerberus forces.

"_Negative sir, enemy exfiled from the area. Checking zone now."_

"_Copy. Once you're finished there return to the front. Host extermination failed. I repeat, host extermination failed. We are to hold this grid at all costs until the techs can activate Plan Zero."_

"_Affirmative, finishing sweep of the area." _A brief moment passed in silence but for the footfalls of armored boots closing in around him, and he managed to scoot himself backwards to rest his back against a wall with a view on the door. He didn't expect to last long after being discovered, but intended to take a few out with him.

"_You two, watch our six."_

From the sounds he could accurately guess their numbers to be five, though that didn't account for nearby reinforcements. If he had to fight them here it would not be to his favor. Close quarters and immobile meant they could destroy him from the safety of the entrance while lobbing grenades, or given enough time and resources nearby could even incapacitate him without destroying him. He felt his machinery glitch momentarily as the thought of capture by Cerberus occurred to him, and he ran a brief diagnostic.

"_Shit_!

"_Look out!_"

Unit Five flexed his synthetic muscles to the breaking point at the sudden outburst around his building, and was utterly baffled for a full second when he heard the sound of gunfire. The likelihood of them shooting at him and missing so badly as to not even hit the building seemed highly unlikely, but he could surmise no other alternative.

An explosion and the tinkling of broken tech hitting the ground brought to him a sudden understanding, though he remained still as the enemy relaxed outside.

"_Just a damn turret. Come on, these guys are long gone. We need to get back ASAP._" A series of confirmations echoed back from the enemy squad before they jogged away from his hiding spot, but he kept himself ready in case it were some type of ruse. After a minute long wait, he finally relaxed and looked about his immediate area for things he might find useful. He needed parts to fix his actuator, and this city wouldn't miss a few low income household items.

He dragged himself to the nearest phone and took it off the counter before ripping the casing off and digging around for some copper.


	4. Rock'em Sock'em Robot

**Rock'em Sock'em Robot**

Prime Unit Five was in a bad way. He had scoured nearly a block of prefabs looking for parts he would need to repair his leg; dragging himself to and fro and leaving longs scratch marks from his heavy chassis scraping the street. By the time he reached the last house and searched it thoroughly, he had only enough materials to make some of his leg actuator in any sense of the word. He had enough copper, but finding materials strong enough to withstand his weight for any period of time in a shot up prefab on a colony world seemed a distant possibility.

He persevered though, searching through the dead Cerberus soldier's armor for bits and pieces he could weld together or patch with. It was during this surprisingly disturbing process that he finally hacked their communication feeds, only to be inundated with cries for help and reinforcements. This took him a moment to ponder, as to his knowledge, no other Alliance forces were in the area. He decided that he lacked too much information to speculate further and continued ripping off armor pieces until he decided he had enough.

Leaning his frame against a large cracked stone pillar, Unit Five began to pull back his leg plating to reaccess the damage. It was the metaphorical 'golden bullet' human historical data referred to. A single hyper velocity round had penetrated his thick armor to slice open the tiny round actuator within his knee plating. It leaked a bit of fluid even as he watched, though this hardly concerned him. He began to ease out the broken former pieces, setting them down beside him methodically, as a surgeon would with his tools before operating.

After a brief time with the electrical prong on his drone, he managed to fuse the pieces together on his makeshift replacement and re-insert it into his knee armor. It looked like a ball of silver wrapped in copper wiring, and were he more attuned to organics, might have considered it rather humiliating. _It does not match this unit's color scheme._

He immediately shunted the runtime that allowed the thought to occur, preferring relative silence over the illogical musing of a possibly faulty program. He finally attempted to stand, steadying himself with one hand against the stone pillar and only wobbling once as he tested the injured limb. It retained stability, but at highly unsatisfactory levels. He calculated a sixty three percent chance that his makeshift replacement would fail before he reached his new objective.

At the reminder of said objective, Unit Five looked north, his brilliantly lit eye scanning the street ahead of him carefully. The Cerberus soldiers had decided to make an old agricultural storehouse into their headquarters, and were apparently being overwhelmed if the voices on the radio were to be believed. He still kept careful tabs on the comm, keeping his movements slow and mostly on his right leg to avoid further strain.

"_We're running low on the east flank! Hoarders are getting too close-"_

"_Get back on that turret you-"_

"_Permission to fall back to baseline zero, how copy? We've got wounded!"_

Moving along the empty street, he continually scanned for movement, but let his runtimes scrounge through the data available to him. 'Hoarders' seemed more like a term for a beast than a enemy unit. A name meant more to describe patterns of behaviour across a broad spectrum.

A quick scan of fauna and flora found no such title for creatures native to the planet, making him reach the conclusion that these 'Hoarders' were either an incredibly recent addition to the wildlife, or were introduced from outside. Now the question became, what would they be fighting thats capable of taking on a well trained military force in a fortified position?

His musings stopped when he registered an unfamiliar sound in a nearby prefab. He shifted his weight to turn and face the entrance, still keeping weight of the bad leg while he inspected further. The prefab was without lighting, that much was obvious from the start. His single light making an orb of white against the pitch black interior. The walls seemed almost inky black and covered in a kind of secreted resin that slid down the walls in waves.

He moved inside carefully, gun ready and light scanning for maximum light per square foot. The entire prefab was covered in the resin, including the floors which left large impressions as he stepped across it. The feeling of slime in the air made him almost think it was physically jamming his intakes, but he refrained from actually checking.

One corner of the little house seemed especially odd, as it had a large pile of what appeared at first glance to be resin covered furniture. When he got closer, the truth became far more obvious, and far more damaging to his memory logs.

Hands, feet, legs, arms heads and torsos could be seen through the sticky coat of slime, as though they were coated in a dark tinted wax. Entire corpses lay against the wall in a pile high enough to reach his waist at around five feet tall. His cognitive faculties escaped him for a brief second as he took in the scene, as never before had he witnessed anything quite like this.

As a machine, he could never experience what it is to be organic in its totality, but he knew the amount of suffering these pained and terrified faces endured must have been phenomenal for it to leave their expressions in that state, even during rigor mortis. They had been moved to this spot by an outside force and placed there; he could only surmise that this phenomenon led to the terminology behind the name, 'Hoarders'.

So focused was he on the images before him that he almost missed the sound that had first drawn him in repeat itself. A slithering sound, not unlike that of a terran snake made him twist his torso in time to see the source. A large, quadrupedal creature clung to the ceiling, curled up in a ball and sleeping. It shifted in its sleep, making the same noise as before and revealing bright blue wiring on its underbelly. It's head seemed covered in the same colored wiring, almost imitating a husk with it's human like features, but the resemblance stopped there.

Unit Five began slowly, _carefully_ retracting his steps from the building; his single optic never leaving the curled up creature stuck to the ceiling. He was watching it intensely for muscle spasms to indicate waking or imminent violence, and so miscalculated the amount of weight to put on his left leg by enough to cause him to stumble slightly. He tried to catch himself on a nearby resin covered coffee table, and succeeded in knocking over half filled wine glasses. They crashed to the ground, the sticky substance only padding their fall enough to hide the pieces of shattered glass from sight, and not muffling the sound.

Without waiting to see if the creature awoke or not, Unit Five decided to move first. He turned as fast as his frame would allow to bring his weapon to bear on the place he'd last seen the beast, only to find the ceiling empty. He whirled around to search, his optic lighting up the dark room with sporadic light in his less-than-efficient search.

A high octave scream alerted him to the creature's attack even as it leapt for him, but his body couldn't react as fast as his mind. He managed to face the Hoarder just in time to catch it's frenzied assault with his front armor, its claws digging into his frame and leaving large gouges across his center. He struggled with it's many arms and... tentacles, if they could so be named, succeeding in fighting the creature to a standstill. It screeched at him as they struggled, synthetic muscles straining against mutated ones until finally machine stamina won out.

The beast howled in rage at not being able to disembowel its target, bright mechanical eyes looking surprisingly emotional as it reached for his face not inches away. It finally had to relent, breaking off the game of rock'em sock'em robot to try and gain some distance from him. He held on to one of its limbs, lifting it from the dark and finally getting a good look at the thing.

It was aesthetically displeasing even to him, and his urge to be done with the conflict amplified exponentially as he took in it's features. It was short, maybe four feet tall at most, and covered in powerfully muscled tentacles that clenched in anger in his grip. It had four clawed, main limbs probably used in running down escaping prey, along with several rows of gnashing carnivorous teeth set in a human like head. It's obvious background in reaper tech made it doubly hideous.

It continued to squirm in his grip, tentacles prying at his arms until he threw it to the ground and stomped it's head into a goopy soup across the floor. After searching for anymore surprises and finding himself to be alone again, Unit Five left the nest quickly, deciding then and there that close range combat with Hoarders seemed a poor tactical decision for anything not of his overwhelming size. Of course, if the remaining Cerberus troops were any indication, there were far, **far **more of these things out there.

He took an even and steady pace once more, pointedly ignoring anymore ominous sounds coming from nearby as he continued to work his way to the Cerberus base. He needed more data to make a tactical decision, and found he had a better chance of finding it there.


	5. A Reason To Dream

A Reason To Dream

The empty streets of Benning seemed eerie even to his synthetic mind as he passed house after silent house. A few times during his slow journey through the city he encountered more of the same sticky black resin along the street. He noticed it more and more the further north he went, and the prefabs seemed to be spilling the material into the street like they were manufacturing it.

He paused next to one such house to run his Omni-tool over a puddle of ichor. The slimy substance was a combination of water, carbon and nanites. The latter were industriously replicating the terraforming substance he'd seen everywhere like a hoard of microscopic spiders making a web. Unit Five felt a distinct urge to wipe his massive feet on the curb to scrape the tiny bots from him, but shoved it down and returned to his march.

The Cerberus radios had gone almost completely silent now, with only the occasional burst of static as surviving units tried to remain quiet and hidden. He only had another block to go before he reached the perimeter of the building, and forced himself to go a little faster despite the added risk to his injured leg. He felt an odd sensation of sympathy for the enemy troops even through his mandate to kill them, but for the functionality of him he couldn't decide why that was.

_Perhaps it has to do with what Palok said before he died. Rogue feelings of any kind could very well hinder the mission, yet it is documented that passions can elevate the efficiency of organics at their tasks. Moderation seems to be the key. _Instead of squashing the thought, he nodded to himself, a habit he was still unaware he had picked up.

He saw more piles of bodies in the streets the nearer he got to the industrial center of Benning, indicating a greater amount of enemies.

He couldn't help but analyze this phenomenon as he passed, noting the placement and configuration of the piles relative to their neighbors. Taking a personal note to send back to the collective, he began making mental annotations to his video. It would still transfer over as text to organics who saw it, after the collective had fully analyzed the data and released it to their allies of course.

_Placement of 'hoarding' piles seems relevant to territory, or 'nests'. Each pile is placed more as a warning to it's neighbor, strategically arranged to be the most visible. This is not typical reaper variant behaviour, and is indicative of personal gain rather than the will of the hivemind that is the reapers themselves. _A slight shudder ran through his system at the idea of being forced into subservience, but through the mind of the collective he knew exactly what the sensation of being moved about like a pawn on a board game felt like.

Unit Five paused his internal recording when he rounded the last residential prefab and came within view of the Cerberus warehouse. His pace slowed exponentially when he finally took in the scene around him, his mind easily following the path of the large battle from the remains and scarring.

The warehouse itself loomed much taller than the surrounding buildings, and the wide double doors stood as though forced open by claws. A cement barricade sat out in front of the doors, covered in blood and a green liquid that appeared to have the same properties as acid. Any armor that touched it was left with gaping holes as it quickly ate away the heavy plate. Some of the troopers were left relatively intact, though most seemed to be missing if the amount of discarded thermal clips were any indication.

He could easily surmise that those who had stayed to fight had been carried off and hoarded, while these had simply been left behind as an afterthought. His inner processes found the scene somewhat hard to log, though it was the dead civilians that brought a spark to his wiring. They hadn't had enough time to escape, and were thus doomed by the Illusive Man as casualties before the fighting had even started.

He knew now exactly why Cerberus had come to this planet seemingly at random to start killing. The only explanation that fit the data was that the hoarders were a virus. Whether created by Cerberus or by the reapers was irrelevant. He needed to find a solution and inform the Alliance, or risk the virus escaping the planet and infecting the galaxy at large.

Unit Five stood beside the barricade, motionless as his processors raced to think of a solution, but time and again his runtimes kept throwing out death tolls and probable infection speeds. He could almost, no, he _could _imagine Rannoch and his creators running in horror from reaper abominations. They would fight, valiantly and with resolve, but it would be for naught. Their ships would not save them from an infection of this magnitude, and reapers would never show mercy as the geth had.

Looking up from the ground he'd been staring at for the last few seconds, he reached an inner revelation. The mission here took priority not because he'd been ordered to accomplish it, but because if he didn't, everything the race who had built him had done would be destroyed. Utterly and without hesitation.

Most quarians now held a deep dislike for his kind, and rightly so in some cases, but Unit Five could remember the days when geth and quarian had been closest friends. They had worked side by side to solve all the toughest problems, all the biggest difficulties, and they could again.

He longed for that day, and his systems grew excited at the prospect of working with organic minds that followed irregular paths to problem solving. Minds that could, in the blink of an eye answer a problem that no matter how fast he thought, he could not reach faster. Organic minds could do things mechanical ones could not, and mechanical minds could do what organic ones could not. The relationship should always have been symbiotic, and now that it could be again, he refused to let the idea die here.

Gripping his nearly empty spitfire, Unit Five entered the broken and torn remains of the Cerberus base with renewed purpose, finding the inside to be just as hard to process as before. Blood dried and pooled in cracked reservoirs across the floor, and the bluish black fluid from the Hoarders matched their victims in volume twice over.

The obvious signs of a last stand sat against the far wall, where a dozen soldiers lay slumped and torn apart. Their guns still held in death grips and their bones pointing at odd angles. The same acidic green fluid was spattered all across the room, even the ceiling in some spots, leading him to believe that at least some of the creatures had a ranged attack as well.

The centerpiece of the warehouse was the hastily destroyed mainframe, with bullet holes and acid spit covering much of the panels and exposing the wiring beneath. He began to access what little information remained via a remote connection to the wireless signal. He began running through their files with relative ease, bashing firewalls like a krogan would a turian who insulted his grandmother. The image danced in his visual pickups for a brief moment as he entertained the idea, but he quickly refocused on his goal. A small program file labeled 'Plan Zero' that he quickly filed away into his memory banks.

He shut the terminal down and placed a grenade from his arsenal at the center of the computer to ensure no one else could find what he'd found. The explosion barely scratched his shields while he moved on from the warehouse, still scanning what files he'd managed to extract.

Plan Zero had been put into motion by one General Oleg Petrovsky, a high ranking military official for the Illusive Man whose current whereabouts were unknown. It entailed the complete eradication of the colony of Benning, starting with rounding up civilians within a radius of the outbreak, and moving to more and more desperate measures when each failed. The last stage of the plan called for Cerberus engineers to construct a bomb large enough to atomize the city, and were given less than two days to completely assemble and activate the device.

Unit Five quickly scanned for the schematics of the Cerberus layout on Benning and found the location they'd been using to house the bomb. A fortified structure not far from the base were the last coordinates for it's location, and he set a waypoint for himself. He tore an Omni-tool from one of the dead Cerberus troops and sent the Alliance what information he could on the situation, warning them to stay away or risk exposure.

He wondered for a second if they would simply dismiss his message as it came from an unknown ID number on Benning, and so added his personal identification number and his missions designation callsign. Hopefully they would heed him despite the method used to call. He felt a brief moment of what he could only describe as sadness when he thought of Ilea and her fate when they discovered she'd lied about him. Not once did satisfaction cross his mind when he thought of her being punished for her mistake, for a mistake it was, and everyone made them. Even him.

All he could truly hope for was that she lived to recognize her feelings as falsely conceived, and came to know geth as allies rather than a convenience. He let his thoughts of the past fade away and set off for the waypoint, his knee joint swaying badly with each step.


	6. No Need For Goodbyes

No Need For Goodbyes

Prime Unit Five stood on the perimeter of the bunker Cerberus had fallen back to, signs of battle and death surrounding the squat buildings entrance. A few Hoarders crouched outside, digging through the bodies for choice bits of meat for sustenance.

They seemed to hunt by smell more than sight, though their eyes were still utilized to a lesser degree. His chassis had a scent of their terraforming substance, and though it would likely disgust his organic allies, they appeared not to notice him because of it.

He moved slowly, raising his Spitfire and spooling it up as he approached the group of creatures. Their heads jerked up at the noise of his gun, but reacted far too late to avoid the hail of death he rained down on them. Bullets tore through the Hoarders just as effectively as they would their unmutated counterparts, dropping them all with a single sweep. He found one unused thermal clip among the dead soldiers and slapped it in, registering his new ammo count and moving inside the bunker.

The lights seemed dimmer than they should have been, often flickering or outright failing from the aftermath of the Hoarders forced entry. A set of stairs wound down to the floor from the entrance, where he could see yet another staircase on the opposite side of the room leading still further down. Each flight led him to another grim scene of lost defense for Cerberus, but despite the evidence, his radio came alive with chatter from them the farther down he got. It seemed the bunker interfered with radio signals unless in close proximity.

"_We've... -last wave on-... -second from last floor sir, holding here."_

"_Understood. Keep alert, I doubt they're done yet. The engineers... -nearly completed."_

Unit Five listened to the chatter intently, filling in the words that cut out with the most likely replacements seemed straight forward enough, he could simply wait until the bomb got deployed, letting Cerberus and the Hoarders fight it out in the mean time. His only course of action would be to intervene if Cerberus began losing before the bomb was ready. He doubted he could arrive in time to actually assist the Cerberus troopers, but if-

"_Here they come again_!"

"_Suppressive fire! Hold them here_!" Sounds of gunfire mixed with static filled the silence, in both his radio and distantly from the stairwell ahead of him. He moved forward yet again, knowing the Cerberus forces were likely on their last leg, and that the bomb had to be protected. His internal processes still argued over his goal, and he found himself somewhat torn despite a majority of runtimes favoring this route.

There were still innocents alive in the city, and they could still feasibly be saved, but the dangers posed by exposure were too large a risk. Logically he knew destroying the city was the best option, as it ensured the virus never left the planet while limiting lives lost from extermination teams.

_This does not assuage the feeling of failure, no matter how many lives were saved by the action. _The more he thought on these things, the more he realized exactly how much the dying STG members words truly meant. Lives were the goal, but sometimes things had to be done for the greater good of all. The logic in his mind nodded emphatically, but the ever growing sense of morals lingered in the back logs.

Unit Five sped up his slow progress down to the second to last floor, straining his field-repaired leg to the limit in an effort to reach the battle in time. He held his Spitfire up and ready, scanning the room as it entered his field of vision. Hoarders leapt at a desperate line of troopers, all of them looking bloodied and ragged, considering Cerberus' usual polished appearance.

Quickly counting the numbers, he tallied ten Hoarders against two Centurions and four troopers. The Reaper creations easily scrambled over the concrete barricades that had been hastily set up, trying to get within melee range under a wave of bullets. Two of them stayed back, claws sunk into the side of the wall where they'd climbed, spitting acidic globs at the humans.

Even as he moved to stop the ones spitting from range, he watched the acid of one spray across a Centurion's shielding and begin eating away at it. The human spared a glance for the hit, but ignored it in favor of booting a Hoarder away from himself. Unit Five spun up his Spitfire once more, spraying the wall with mass accelerator rounds that tore into the surprised animals to a chorus of squeals and agonized screams.

The ranged units dealt with, he turned the fiery barrel of his weapon to the remaining creatures not actively engaged with Cerberus soldiers, as they were the larger threat. The soldiers were going down quickly, screams echoing along the walls as they were ripped apart despite their heavy armor. The two Centurions began backing away towards the last stairwell, side to side and firing into the mass of howling creatures, leaving their soldiers to die under enraged claws. He kept the trigger down on his weapon, reducing the number of creatures significantly before both the remaining factions combatants fled through the stairway at the far end of the room.

Some of the Hoarders in the room still kicked feebly, riddled with bullets and mewling softly as they died next to the bloodied remains of their victims. All the troopers lay dead before him as he moved past, only their commanders and six more Hoarders moving the fight into the last chamber while he followed.

He had just reached the stairs when he felt something within his knee snap, a copper wire or one of the welded metal pieces holding the actuator in place finally caving in to the massive weight of his chassis. With a robotic noise of surprise that would likely have deafened an organic, he toppled, crashing down the stairs. He felt the metal stairs cave in a few times behind him as he fell, until he flashed a hand out to grab the nearest railing. He slowed his descent only marginally, the banister coming apart in his metallic grip and falling with him until he landed heavily at the bottom.

Rolling around to face the ground and push himself up, Unit Five only realized his right arm failed to comply when hydraulic fluid splashed his optic. He looked down to find it bent at a highly inoperable angle from the fall, the muscles sending error reports that filled his vision until he cleared them in frustration. The only thing that mattered was saving the bomb from the Reapers, and thus the sight before him sent jolts through his system.

_I cannot be too late..._

A pair of turrets sat surrounding the bottom of the stairs facing him, both with trails of smoke and sparks emanating from them as their barrels stared down to the ground. Blood and bullet marks covered the floor around him, the corpses of Hoarders still hot as they lie dying. Beyond that sat the Bomb itself, machines and computers surrounding it in the center of the room. It looked like a series five planet cracker edition, something used by the krogan during the rebellions to wipe out turian settlements quickly and efficiently.

Two dead Cerberus engineers lay sprawled out beside the culmination of their work, along with a pair of Centurions next to a pile of Hoarders, each having killed the other to a man. Reaching out with his left arm, Unit Five began to drag himself forward inch by inch closer to the bomb. He called up the schematics for it; a wireless link to the extranet courtesy of Cerberus allowing him to find it quickly.

From what he could tell by looking, they had managed to get extremely close to finishing, or maybe even _had_ finished before they died. As he got closer, one of the engineers groaned and moved a little, holding his side from a massive slash across his stomach. His helmet made his gasp sound loud in the enclosed room, and he seemed not to notice the giant geth unit crawling not five feet from him.

The engineer attempted to sit up, coughing hoarsely and putting his back up against one of the computer banks. He finally seemed to realize what Unit Five actually was, as his breathing increased and he fumbled with one hand for a pistol on his hip.

A shot rang out as the man fired, his hand unsteady and barely able to grip the gun as he shot again and again. Unit Five didn't even flinch as the tiny rounds bounced off his shields, choosing instead to continue moving forward to his objective. The man groaned loudly as he tried to speak, his voice turning into another violent cough.

"N- *cough* No! You can't! *Cough*" The man wheezed in desperation, watching helplessly as he reached the main controls for the device meant to destroy the city. "You can't st- *cough* Have to destroy this city!" His words became garbled towards the end, probably from blood beginning to fill his mouth. Unit Five lifted himself up with one arm to rest on his good knee, analyzing the controls before him and bringing up the menu with a few quick taps.

"Please!" The pistol fell from the dying man's hands, his arm dropping to his side as he pleaded. "You don't understand..." his words were a whisper, "We had to save them." The engineer's head abruptly fell to his chin, his dying words using the last of his energy.

Silently, Unit Five bowed his head in a moment of silence, taking the time to observe the humans culture as there were no immediate threats in the vicinity. When he returned to the panel before him, he quickly activated the diagnostics to find the bomb completely functional, and needing only the press of a button. For the first time in his existence, Unit Five hesitated in fulfilling his objective, his processes urging his 'mind' to motion while he heard the same words repeated over and over.

"_Do an old salarian a favor, and prove to me you really are __**alive.**_"

_A_fter a moments hesitation, he hit the countdown timer activation, showing thirty seconds until detonation.

_I tried, Palok Renten. And perhaps this platform simply did not have enough processing power, or had insufficient time to fully acclimate to decisions of this magnitude. _

Unit Five pushed himself back from the controls, watching the timer slowly tick ever downwards as he settled his body beside the engineer with his back to the computer. He attempted to send his recordings, inner files and audio logs to the Alliance through the extranet, but found the bandwidth of the makeshift wireless router too small to send his mind back as well. He would be incapable of being sent back to the collective and revived from this tiny nook of the galaxy, so he settled in to think. Seconds passed like an eternity to him, the countdown only just now hitting fifteen while he pondered his choices.

_While I doubt the possibility of there being a heaven, I maintain hope that Palok has made it there. As Legion once said to Commander John Shepard, timestamp 2185 CE: "Hope often sustains organics in times of difficulty. We... Admire the concept." _

The timer reached five, and he looked up at the scene of battle all around him, feeling only sadness that it had to be this way. He had tried so hard to complete the mission assigned to him, and hoped others would look on his choice with approval instead of anger or malice.

He wanted to make his comrades proud, and realized that no matter how the war with the Reapers was won, it would be because a select few had inspired others to great deeds.

When the timer reached zero, he thought maybe, just maybe, his story would be one of those capable of inspiring. That he, a geth, had played a part in saving organics from a fate worse than death, and that made him feel more alive than ever before.


End file.
